How Bell shifted the bill to other cities

San Bernardino Sun and Los Angeles Daily News

From the San Bernardino Sun: Bell’s infamous ... city manager, Robert Rizzo, was paid a stratospheric $787,000 a year, but, with perks and benefits, was actually sucking the city’s taxpayers dry to the tune of about $1.5 million annually.

[His case raises questions about] the state’s pension system for public employees. How ripe that system is for abuse is demonstrated by the fact that Rancho Cucamonga, which employed Rizzo for eight years in the 1980s and paid him a reasonable amount, will have to contribute more than $125,000 a year to Rizzo’s retirement for the next three decades or so. … Rancho is stuck because California Public Employees’ Retirement System formulas use the final year’s compensation to determine the annual retirement benefit …

Clearly, CalPERS cannot be trusted to police itself. CalPERS officials knew about the ridiculously large raises Rizzo was getting but approved them, knowing that it would spike his pension. The baffling “logic” from a CalPERS official was that it was OK for Rizzo to get a huge bump because other top city officials in Bell were getting similar increases.

From the Los Angeles Daily News: Because of the complicated rules under the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, every city that employed the folks in Bell will have to pay part of their retirement benefits. …

Whatever happens in this particular case, it shows that CalPERS’ rules about pension liability must be changed. If cities like Bell know they can pass on the costs of exorbitant salaries to taxpayers in other cities, they will be more likely to make others pay for their own excesses.